Vanguard carb backorder saga continues.

[StarTech]

I have pretty happy with stens. Shipping is reasonable and customer service is decent.

I have been using them since 2017. I started using them direct when TEW, Inc went under and left me in one heck of a bind. Just got watch the pricing at times as some are OEM parts with a higher cost. But I did get some good news back in December from my sales rep. After I requested the pricing file for my system, she up my discount which makes them a lot more attractive to buy from. But is why I do my research before buying items.

I requested the price file mainly because I got tire of having to enter every new part PN info manually. It didn't include every part they sell but did include most of them. Right now I in my dead zone business wise so I can't purchase a lot of unknowns until the season starts back up. It also makes it a lot easier to look-up parts using my internal database search where I cross reference parts to other vendors.

 

[bertsmobile1]

I agree they just don't care but I do as it hits my bottom line too. And it was us small businesses that built these companies but they don't care. Enough of us quits it might get their attention.

It sorta like A&I demanding me to spend at $2K with per year when I could easily done that last year if their products were up to par and the sales rep actually did his job when I ask for sales support. They are threatening to cut me off but said they are willing for me to buy from another A&I dealer which is not going to happen as I know the amount of mark-up involved. Most likely I will just dump them first and switch over to Oregon and Stens more; so much for a 12yrs business relationship. The killer is high shipping rates for smaller than $200 orders which would ship for free if order $200.01 or more. But on a $192 order they had hit me for $45 in shipping charges. Ouch.

And yes I have ran into several places that simply refuses cash payments locally. I have not used physical checks in several years here but it is because of the untimely mail times.

The situation with your telcom is sorta like it was with me and Power Distributors. I tried to get them to give me the same discount price on parts as I got through A&I but they simply decided to close my account instead.

And yes I do realize I like poppy seed in an ocean of whales so I don't even matter to them.

People do not seem to get the CEO / MBA mentality
A business to them is something they buy & sell the same as you buy parts & sell them.
And all business are the same so customers do not matter unless they account for a double digit percentage of income .
Most of them do not even see a number that is lower than 100,000 if not 1,000,000.
Because of the low par stock nearly every order I place has at least 1 item go to back order.
Then All Power had the Stens distribution contract I had a long chat with one of the accounts staff who ended up doing a spreadsheet recording the number of backorder deliveries where their actual freight cost exceeded the gross mark up on the part .
Ended up being around $ 30,000 / month
The

As for freight charges, they are a policy matter but as you should know, it costs money to pick, pack & post an order plus more to raise an invoice then recieve the money . The WWW has now widened price shopping so having the lowest price on the web is now a big money maker .
To do that you cut your margins ( and squeeze your suppliers ) .
Again in the minds of the MBA managers you work out the fixed costs of running the warehouse then add an amount to recover this money from the least profitable sales, the idea being that it will ( & does ) encourage customers to place larger orders which are usually more profitable to fill .

FWIW, the biggest wholesalers do not do free freight for orders under $ 1000 and only then to customers who pay on invoice.
The second biggest wholesalers do not do free freight either but discount 5% if you pay on the delivery day and that discount goes down to 0 % each week till you get to 30 days.
Freight charges are a good way to evaluate the efficency of a warehouse, those that are run properly with suficient volume have very low freight rates .

 

[StarTech]

I just wish I had the volume to justify spending and stocking a lot of items but you as hinted at the internet is a huge problem for us small business. Customers see the online prices and think we are just ripping them off not realizing that we need to make a profit to stay in business ourselves. Those Chinese items that most of us know to of poor quality is what a lot my customer hit me with when it come to pricing.

Some have learned the hard way when they have to send parts back several times because they are made wrong and incur shipping charges and restocking fees.

What worst is the playing field is not level either when it comes to shipping charges. Large volume shippers gets cut rates but places like mine has to make up for these deep discounts by paying full retail prices. This is why I quit selling on eBay as my costs were consuming all the profit.

Bert you have convinced me to dump A&I just to get rid my headaches with them. Sometimes it is better just cut ties as they have been a pita every since they brought out Sunbelt Outdoors three years ago.


And I probably going to dump Gardner too but that depends on the next few months and their attitude. I have been using Gardner for just a little over three years so they are not as deeply depended on as Sunbelt was.

Now RBI has only a couple years of use but they seems to more willing the work with me. Just wished they carried General Transmissions, Hydro Gear and Tuff Torq parts like Gardner.

As you can see on just these vendors sales, two took took a fairly good hit back in the 2020 year due Covid. Rbi was just brought on board at the end of 2019 so their figures are not showing a turn down purchase wise. A&I purchases cames to a full stop in June and Gardner came to a full stop in August. Their faults for sales to stop in 2021.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

I sometimes have customers see a part on cheapbay and question my price or they buy the part there. I tell them i don't give any kind of warranty on any customer supplied parts and if they want the $9 coil or $5 belt that's fine. You buy it. I will charge you to put it on and if it fails not my problem. Don't have many folks like that but like i always say. You need customers just not every customers. Had a guy buy a JD maint kit for $75 and provided it so he could save money on parts. He didn't save any money. As much as i hate it i can get brand name tires from Amazon cheaper than stens or other online parts houses. I just got a set of Carlisle brand tires for a ZTR from the Amazon monster and the order was fulfilled by an online parts house and the same tires were more expensive on their website plus shipping.

 

[StarTech]

I do the same on customer provided parts.

So far my distributor has been cheaper on Carlisle tires then the supposedly same tires on Smile Amazon where I have a business account. I can get cheaper even than some of the Chinese tires that I can get through A&I.

But there are vendors that sell on Amazon cheaper than direct sales one example is DB Electrical even the parts get shipped out the same warehouse so I buy most my after market starters through Amazon.

So I have seen the same thing as you experience on parts like the tires.

 

[catman606]

Are Kawasaki parts easier to get than Briggs parts?

 

[StarTech]

Currently yes at least on my part as the distributor here usually has them in stock. Now I do have a few Kawasaki carburetor parts on back order but are not commonly ordered items. Even when the Kawasaki parts are back ordered usually arrives at the distributor within two weeks.

This unlike the current problems with Briggs where some parts have been on back order for nearly six months. Now take with the fact Briggs is trying to recover from bankruptcy which a lot of hard feeling between them and their suppliers. Before this all engine parts supplies were very good at providing parts in a timely matter.

I do foresee problems in near future for all our vendors due the current Covid-19 surge. Of course the current political climate doesn't help either.

One of my complaints currently is that the distributors are acting like it is their customers fault for the current problem when we are suffering just like they are because of hte current business turn down. In 2020 year I lost nearly a quarter of my sales because Covid. It was recovering nicely in 2021 but this latest Covid surge is going to hurt income again.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Like hammer I charge extra for fitting parts supplied by the customer, usually $ 30 .
Like Star I get cranky when I see parts that have come from one of my wholesalers listed on a web shop for less than my cost price.
RGS are doing this on a lot of parts because they have installed an ex supermarket executive into top level management.
As we know mowers & weekly food shopping are not the same thing
Result of this is of course more parts bought direct from manufacturers and less from RGS
Mr Woolworths looks like he is going to drop all of the slow moving or very old items in favour of high volumes of current model parts .
Right now I am looking at sending some coils to China to have them made because RGS dropped them and I use at least 4 a year.
And of course these old mowers are the ones that I service regularly and make up my bread & butter sales .

 

[ILENGINE]

Like Bert and Star I have had distributors/manufacturers sell directly to the customer cheaper than I can buy it from the distributors. Poulan Pro Z turns for $250 below dealer cost at Rural King. Generac selling on Amazon $90 dollars cheaper than Dealer price and also offering free shipping on 10K watt generators.

Had a good laugh a few years ago at a local Walmart when they were bragging about the number of power equipment units they sold per year. And I broke their bubble when I told them that their annual sales was half of what the local Rural King would sell on their one day No Sales Tax Saturday sale.

 

[StarTech]

Bert this where when you have the time to do procurement you can things work out for the better. Several of my distributors sell Xtreme PTO clutches along with Xtreme selling direct. I just do my price checks and order from whoever has the best price. I can see where different distributors get different pricing plans.

I do the same thing on other parts too. One has the best on Husqvarna parts but charges more the MTD parts as where the other has better MTD part prices than on Husqvarna. Basically it is trying to the best overall prices on an order that finally wins out. They both probably hate me for working the system but it takes it to keep a small shop profitable while giving a fair price to customer and staying competitive with other shops.